Snyder T. The Reconstruction of Nations Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569-1999. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004. 384 p

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The ﬁrst important Belarusian periodical, Nasha Niva (Our Soil), appeared in

. Before , no one thought in terms of a Belarusian nation requiring

state independence. As we see, there was no simple connection between “eth-

nicity” and nationalism in politics. In Vil’nia city, Belarusian speakers far out-

numbered Lithuanian speakers. In the Vil’na province as a whole, speakers of

Belarusian were more than half the population. In Vil’na, Minsk, Grodno,

Mogilev, and Vitebsk provinces, contiguous territories of historic Lithuania,

speakers of Belarusian were three-quarters of the population. Nowhere, how-

ever, did Belarusian peasants much beneﬁt from industrialization, and nowhere

did Belarusians dominate urban life. In every city in which Belarusian speakers

were a signiﬁcant fraction of the population, they were less literate as a group

than the rest of the population.

Although Vilnius/Vil’nia was important for Lithuanian and Belarusian ac-

tivists, these activists were not really important to Wilno. In , Polish domi-

nated public life, although it was not the same Polish spoken in Warsaw. Under

Russian imperial rule, a special sort of Polish culture consolidated its hold on

Wilno and the Wilno region (Wilen´szczyzna). Despite a series of laws aiming to

transfer land ownership to Russians and Orthodox, in the early twentieth cen-

tury Poles still owned most of the land in Vil’na province.

In , the Poles

were probably, by a small margin over the Jews, the city’s plurality. Depending

upon one’s point of view, Polish was either the dominant nationality in and

around Wilno or not a nationality at all: assimilation to Polish language was re-

garded not so much as joining a distinct national society as joining respectable

society.

In historic Lithuania, there was little thought of “awakening” speak-

ers of Polish to their “true” national identity, since the culture was attractive

anyway, and since mastery of the language itself signaled social position. Polish

culture in the old Grand Duchy was not seen as an “ethnic” reality to be trans-

lated into political power by the energetic work of activists, but rather as a hu-

man quality whose representatives (whatever their “ethnic” origins) set the

terms of cultured conversation.

Elite participants in this version of Polishness, known after  as the “kra-

jowcy” (“natives”), regarded it as distinct from the Polishness of the Polish

crownlands to the west. Aware of their families’ roots in the Lithuanian nobil-

ity, and often bilingual or trilingual themselves, they regarded the Grand

Duchy as the most beautiful part of the Polish inheritance. For such Poles,

Wilno was the center of the civilization they had formed, sustained, and wished

to represent in a reborn Poland. Far from seeing Wilno as an “ethnically” Polish

city in the northeastern corner of a future “ethnic” Poland, they regarded it as

The Contested Lithuanian-Belarusian Fatherland

the capital of a historic Lithuania whose association with the Polish crownlands

was a central question of politics. All of them saw Lithuania, in its post-

historical deﬁnition, as their political homeland. Most of them assumed that

historical Lithuania would form a common entity with the Polish crownlands,

although some preferred to leave this question to a future parliament in

Wilno.

The “krajowcy” were more faithful students of Mickiewicz than ei-

ther modern Polish or Lithuanian nationalists. In the early twentieth century,

their political views were given a federalist structure by patriotic socialists such

as Józef Pilsudski.

Such Lithuanian Poles presumed that their Polishness was superior to others’

by virtue of the traditions of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and that Polish

culture in general was of a higher quality than that available in the Lithuanian

or Belarusian languages. As modern ideas of nationality spread, this double

conﬁdence set a trap. On the one hand, because the sense of superiority vis-à-

vis the Polish crownlands was based upon local tradition, it could not be ac-

cepted by Poles in Warsaw or Cracow. The ongoing appropriation of Mick-

iewicz as simply Polish was proof of this. On the other hand, cultivation of

those very local traditions risked a bitter harvest. There was no censure of those

who carried out the ﬁrst stages of the Lithuanian and Belarusian national re-

vival in Polish, since folk culture was seen as part of the heritage of the Grand

Duchy.

Yet the images and tropes of these works were available to modern

challengers of the dominant culture, who reproduced them in Lithuanian and

Belarusian. As some members of elite Roman Catholic families “defected” to

the Belarusian and Lithuanian national movements after , and as Lithuan-

ian activists emerged from the countryside, Polishness slowly became a choice

which had to be defended.

During the Revolution of  the Lithuanian assembly won meaningful

concessions from the tsarist administration. Some Polish Lithuanians, such as

Michal Römer (later Mykolas Römer’is, –), drew the lesson that Lith-

uanian nationality was a force to be taken seriously. Römer believed that his-

toric Lithuania should be created as a multinational state of Lithuanians, Be-

larusians, Jews, and Poles, in which Lithuanians could play the leading role,

and in which Poles would mediate among cultures. This imaginative solution,

faithful to the traditions of the Grand Duchy and alert to the new Lithuanian

movement, was not easily acceptable to modern national activists. True, lead-

ing Lithuanian activists such as Basanavicˇius and S

liupas had ﬂirted with some-

thing similar.

As we have seen, such Lithuanian national activists faced prac-

tical problems in the appropriation of this multinational legacy, problems

First World War and Wilno Question

which led them to deﬁne Lithuania in ethnic terms. By the time some Lithuan-

ian Poles were ready for such a compromise, Lithuanian activists were deter-

mined to replace Polish culture with Lithuanian within a more or less ethni-

cally deﬁned Lithuanian state.

Jews, whose connection to an ancient civilization was unquestionable, and

whose distinctiveness was palpable, escaped such dialectics. The Jews, who rep-

resented  percent of the city’s population and perhaps three quarters of its

traders in , had inhabited the “Jerusalem of Lithuania” in large numbers for

four hundred years.

The “Lithuania” in question was the old Grand Duchy,

which had included cities such as Minsk (by this time about  percent Jewish),

Homel ( percent Jewish), Pinsk ( percent Jewish), and Vitebsk ( percent

Jewish). The Vitebsk of this era is best known from the paintings of its native

son, Marc Chagall (–). Vilne had been one of the great centers of Tal-

mudic scholarship, home to scholars such as Elijah ben Solomon (–),

known as the Gaon of Vilne and recalled as great opponent of the Hasidic move-

ment. These oppositions should be kept in perspective: the Gaon, like the Ha-

sidim, tried practical Kabbalah, and learned herbal medicine from Christians.

He even tried to make a golem. In the nineteenth century Vilne was the major

center of the Haskalah, or Jewish Enlightenment, in the Russian empire. The

children of the Haskalah tended to become the founders of modern Jewish po-

litical parties. Although participation in politics was limited to a secularized (or

secularizing) minority of young people, the atmosphere of the city was pro-

ductive of Jewish political organization within historically viable possibilities.

What was absent was a political assimilationism, which (as in contemporary

Vienna or Lwów) linked public use of the dominant language to loyalty to the

political regime. In Vilne the dominant Christian culture was Polish and Ro-

man Catholic but the political regime was Russian and Orthodox, and there

was no hope among Lithuanian Jews at the end of the nineteenth century that

Polish culture could liberalize a Russian regime.

This great distance from Pol-

ish politics made Vilne (Wilno), unlike Lemberik (Lwów), the source of visions

of alternative forms of modern Jewish politics.

Although Zionism was a form of nationalism and Marxism a form of inter-

nationalism, both posed problems for Polish culture in Vilne. Zionists and Jew-

ish socialists alike were more hostile to Polish than to Lithuanian national aspi-

rations, on the logic that a Lithuanian state would be multinational and weak,

whereas a Polish state might be national and strong. Zionism was a reactive na-

tionalism, a means to preserve and dignify the Jewish people by promising

them their own territorial homeland. Since Jews were concentrated in cities

The Contested Lithuanian-Belarusian Fatherland

and towns throughout the old Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (most of

which had become the Russian Pale of Settlement), this was a special sort of na-

tional project. Zionists could not lay claim to a European territory on grounds

of past statehood or present demography: their putative homeland lay in Asia

(or, in some variants, Africa). Zionists could not compete for the territory of

the old Grand Duchy, but in their use of Yiddish and their advocacy of Hebrew

they could further distance Jewish culture from Polish. Jewish socialists in his-

toric Lithuania, by contrast, conceived the future in terms of a European or in-

ternational revolution. Legacies of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the striv-

ings of modern nationalists would be mooted by this great transformation. In

the meantime, however, it was necessary to organize the revolution, and the

language of politics for such Jews was Russian or Yiddish. Jewish socialists in

Vil’na annoyed Polish political activists by using Russian rather than Polish: in

one instance Pilsudski proposed Yiddish as a compromise.

Russophone so-

cialists of Jewish origin from historic Lithuania formed the Bund in Vil’na in

, and played a local part in the Revolution of , and then a major part in

the Bolshevik Revolution of .

WORLD WAR AND NATIONAL CLAIMS

The Bolshevik Revolution and the First World War allowed the creation of new

states in historic Lithuania. The defeat and collapse of the Russian empire

opened the way for the creation of Lithuanian and Polish states, and for their

contest for Vilnius/Wilno. After the Polish-Bolshevik war of  – and skir-

mishes between Polish and Lithuanian armies, Poland seized Wilno in .

Although this operation was organized by Polish federalists, it served the cause

of Polish nationalists.

Although we have concentrated upon the Polish federalism of the Wilno re-

gion, the dominant trends in Polish nationalism were decided in Warsaw, Lódz´,

Cracow, Poznan´ and the central Polish countryside. In the old Polish crown-

lands, historical and social differences ensured that the Polish idea took a mod-

ern turn. Here Polish-speaking elites were confronted not with peasants who

spoke another language, but with peasants who spoke Polish; Jews and Ger-

mans in the cities and towns; and Russian, German, or Austrian agents of em-

pire. That some areas where peasants and workers spoke Polish had not been

part of the Polish crownlands only strengthened a linguistic over a historical

deﬁnition of nationality. In the late nineteenth century, linguistic (ethnic) na-

tionalism could unite elites and masses in central Poland: it was no source of

First World War and Wilno Question

shame to use a language the people could understand, and that language was al-

ready codiﬁed and rich. Indeed, in central Poland the preservation of Polish

culture became the ﬁrst priority of patriots; and Polish language, Roman

Catholic religion, and familiarity with Romantic poetry became markers of

Polish nationality.

Whereas the Polish patriotism of Wilno was located in

elite families who referred to the historical statehood of the Grand Duchy of Lith-

uania, the Polish nationalism of the crownlands—the National Democratic

movement of Roman Dmowski (–)—was concerned with preparing

Polish peasants and workers for a modern national state.

Dmowski and Pilsudski represented different sorts of Polishness and imag-

ined different sorts of Polands. Pilsudski’s socialist federalism was an exemplary

reaction of Lithuanian Poles to modern politics. His conspiratorial socialist ag-

itation in the Russian empire ﬂowed naturally from the eastern Polish self-im-

age as cultured elite with superior knowledge of the order of things. The 

program of his Polish Socialist Party (PPS) envisioned a federation. This social-

ist federalism, a halfway house between early modern patriotism and modern

mass politics, can be distinguished from Dmowski’s National Democracy in

three ways. First, it was inherited tradition rather than invented history. Elite

families who wished to restore the Grand Duchy were operating within gener-

ationally continuous conceptions of nationality. Second, socialist federalism

was advanced not by enlightening the masses but by conspiring with trusted

comrades. National issues were hotly disputed within Pilsudski’s PPS, but un-

til the party split in  the party leadership never considered following the

masses rather than leading them. Third, socialist federalism presumed that the

nation was not a linguistic but a status group. The point was not to imagine

that everyone on a given territory was of the same ethnic group and therefore

deserved a national state, but to recognize differences and channel them within

a republican idea of Polish citizenship. Sons and daughters of eastern Polish

gentry families, conﬁdent of their superiority to local Lithuanian or Belarusian

peasants and Jews, could believe that such a republic would be Polish in culture.

Such people were quite numerous in the conspiratorial politics of imperial Rus-

sia before , and there is reason to think that Polish gentry in the Wilno re-

gion voted for the federalist Left in democratic Poland after .

Dmowski, a stonecutter’s son from a central Polish backwater, drew different

political conclusions from a different historical situation. Whereas Pilsudski

envisioned a Polish political nation ﬂoating above the multinational border-

lands he called home, Dmowski saw a Polish folk nation in ﬁerce competition

with wily Jews and disciplined Germans. From the putative folk nation he drew

The Contested Lithuanian-Belarusian Fatherland

the criteria by which Poles could be distinguished from others: language and re-

ligion. Dmowski added fashionable Social Darwinian arguments as to why

such groups must consolidate around such features and defend themselves

from others. Whereas Pilsudski was nostalgic, Dmowski called himself “a mod-

ern Pole.” Dmowski openly sought to destroy the legacy of the Polish-Lithuanian

Commonwealth, and replace it with a modern Polish identity. Although Pilsud-

ski was the socialist, Dmowski was more concerned with social change and with

the ideological content of mass politics. Before the First World War, Dmowski’s

social achievements were less dramatic than the spectacular coups of Pilsudski

and his socialists, but did more to determine the content of Polish nationality.

Dmowski’s deﬁnition of Polishness was all but hegemonic by , and his Na-

tional Democratic movement the most important in Polish lands.

It was his

party that won the most votes in Poland as a whole in elections held after .

Pilsudski’s and Dmowski’s ideas mattered not simply in the long run of so-

cial history, but at crucial moments when it might seem, at ﬁrst glance, that

only military force decided the course of events. At the end of the First World

War, Wilno was the scene of three overlapping contests: () between represen-

tatives of these two ideas of Polishness; () among believers in internationalist,

multinationalist, and modern nationalist deﬁnitions of “Lithuania”; () among

Bolshevik, Polish, Lithuanian, and Belarusian activists for physical control of

the city. By , all the groups mentioned thus far—internationalist children

of the Grand Duchy (Slavs, Jews, and Balts alike) who became Bolsheviks, loyal

children of the Grand Duchy who became Polish or Belarusian socialist feder-

alists, Lithuanian national activists, and Polish modern nationalists—had ﬁrm

ideas about the proper form of state organization and the proper arrangement

of state borders. The Bolsheviks expected communism to embrace Vil’na; Pol-

ish and Belarusian socialist federalists agreed that Wilno/Vil’nia would be a

capital of a multinational state; Polish and Lithuanian nationalists agreed that

Wilno/Vilnius would be included within a nation-state (while disagreeing

about which one). As we shall see, federalism was more demanding than na-

tionalism or internationalism. Federalist solutions required well-chosen bor-

ders, compromises among local elites, and the consent of the governed. They

were inherently more complex than the annexation of Wilno by either Bolshe-

vik Russia or a national state.

Polish and Lithuanian nationalists proved correct that Wilno/Vilnius would

be annexed by a national state, with the Polish nationalists right about which

national state this would be. The prophets and victors, Polish nationalists, were

far from the strongest group. Locally, they may have been the weakest. Unlike

First World War and Wilno Question

Lithuanian nationalists and Belarusian federalists, they did not even expect

mass support in the lands of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Unlike the Bol-

sheviks and the Polish federalists, they never ﬁelded armies that occupied

Wilno. Unlike every other single group (including the Bolsheviks), they made

no reference to the legacy of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The triumph of

both their preferred idea of the state and their preferred arrangement of borders

reveals the advantages of modern nationalist ideas at moments of imperial col-

lapse. Pilsudski had material advantages, but was trapped by inherent compli-

cations of the federalist project. When other parties rejected a federation,

Pilsudski found himself with no choice but to throw his forces behind what was

effectively Dmowski’s policy. This was not so much a victory for Poland, as for

one vision of Poland. It was not so much an example of postwar self-determi-

nation, as the triumph of modern nationalism over the traditional multina-

tional patriotism of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (and in some measure over

the internationalism of the Bolsheviks).

By , Mickiewicz’s poetry, the fruit of nostalgia for the Grand Duchy of

Lithuania, had entered the canons of modern Polish and modern Lithuanian

nationalism. In , Pilsudski’s federalism, the hope to revive the Grand

Duchy of Lithuania, motivated the soldiers who took Wilno and brought it

within the borders of a Polish national state. Let us retreat from the realm of

irony to the world of war, to see how this happened.

THE FIRST WORLD WAR AND THE

POLISH-BOLSHEVIK WAR

The Bolshevik Revolution of November  and the end of the First World

War in November  created a very confusing situation in Russia’s Northwest

Territory, the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The German army would

submit in the West to Britain, France, and the United States, but it was unde-

feated in the East. Meanwhile Soviet Red and Russian White Armies battled

each other, and local politicians in historic Lithuania declared national inde-

pendence and tried to raise armies of their own. The Entente powers’ support

for self-determination provided the normative basis for Polish independence,

but Western states lacked the military power to determine or enforce outcomes

in the East. German troops withdrew ﬁtfully, and in many cases found reasons

to stay and ﬁght the Bolsheviks.

Lithuanian and Belarusian activists hoped to use the presence of German

troops as cover for the creation of their own new states before the Bolsheviks ar-

The Contested Lithuanian-Belarusian Fatherland

rived. The Belarusian claim to Vil’nia was the ﬁrst to fail. The Belarusian Na-

tional Council, led by Anton Lutskevich (–), had proclaimed Vil’nia

part of an independent Belarus in March . The Belarus they had in mind

was to be multinational, and their territorial claims were combined with a

statement on toleration. Lutskevich wished to recreate the old Grand Duchy of

Lithuania as a modern socialist federation stretching from the Baltic to the

Black Sea. The declaration was made under German occupation, although it

enjoyed no German support. In any event Lutskevich and most of the Council

ﬂed Minsk before the arrival of the Red Army in December . In Vil’nia,

they proposed a Belarusian-Lithuanian confederation. Belarusian socialists be-

lieved that federation would save Vil’nia from a “clerical bourgeois” Lithuanian

national state.

Lithuanian leaders, in dire straits themselves by this time, were

uninterested in that form of salvation. Thus ended, for the time being, the pro-

ject to re-create historic Lithuanian under the name Belarus. From this failure

came a quiet success. Although the Bolshevik Party was centralized, it promised

a Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic to the Belarusian activists who stayed in

Minsk.

Although initially but a sliver of territory around Minsk, the Be-

lorussian SSR would expand enormously after the establishment of the Soviet

Union in , and survive for seventy years.

The Bolshevik Revolution had removed loyalism to Russia from Lithuanian

political life, and the experience of war had clariﬁed the goals of Lithuanian na-

tionalists. The war’s ﬁnal year had whetted appetites for full independence. In

September , a Lithuanian national council (Taryba) enjoying the protec-

tion of the German army declared in Vilnius the necessity for an independent

Lithuanian state “within ethnographic frontiers.” Having endorsed the procla-

mation of a Kingdom of Poland, the Germans wished to prevent Polish claims

to Wilno and Lithuania. Lithuanian activists were perfectly aware of such Ger-

man strategic considerations, and sought to make the most of them.

On 

December , the Taryba declared independence in Vilnius, at the same time

accepting the status of a German protectorate. Lithuanian activists watched

anxiously as German and Bolshevik negotiators at Brest-Litovsk both used ar-

guments of self-determination to secure their own claims to Lithuania. In Feb-

ruary  the Taryba once again declared independence, this time without the

pledge of loyalty to Germany. Berlin paid little attention, as its troops advanced

deep into Russia. It was German defeat in the West that allowed the Taryba in

October  to plot a new course.

There was no time for celebration. The

Red Army began a quick advance. Hasty negotiations for Polish troops to pro-

tect Lithuania broke down in December . The Lithuanian government,

First World War and Wilno Question

having failed to raise an army, evacuated exposed Vilnius for more westerly

Kaunas. Local Polish volunteers were no match for the Red Army, which took

the city on  January . Vilnius then became the capital of the Lithuanian

Soviet Socialist Republic, led by two Lithuanian communists. This creation

was shortly merged with the new Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, and

Vilnius became the capital of the “LitBel” Soviet Socialist Republic. For Pil-

sudski, Lithuanian patriot, Polish federalist, and republican socialist, this was

the worst possible outcome. In Warsaw, he wept.

Yet neither in Warsaw nor in Kaunas was this outcome seen as ﬁnal. In early

, the presence or absence of military forces little affected how Lithuanians

and Poles thought about Vilnius/Wilno. Lithuanian leaders saw Vilnius as

their national capital, and from a position of extreme weakness they demanded

that Poland renounce its claims. Pilsudski, now Polish head of state, was pre-

pared to grant Wilno to the Lithuanians, on the condition that Lithuania join

Poland in a federation. The idea of joining a Polish state was anathema to

Lithuanian politicians, who feared Polish high culture and numerical predom-

inance, and by now desired full independence.

These fears and aspirations

was not fully grasped by Pilsudski and Polish federalists, although theirs was

more liberal than the other Polish position. Their rivals in Poland, Dmowski’s

National Democrats, assumed that tiny Lithuania (if it survived at all) had no

choice but to become a Polish satellite.

Polish and Lithuanian nationalists

were in accord on the main issue: that the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

was dead, that no multinational federation could arise.

The practical issue of Bolshevik power was seen within the framework of

such moral imperatives. In February  Polish troops marched east to engage

the Red Army. The Polish parliament was divided as to the territorial aims of

the undeclared war, but could proclaim that “the northeast provinces of Poland

with their capital in Wilno” should be liberated.

Pilsudski’s army drove the

Red Army from Wilno on  April . Lithuanian and Belarusian commu-

nists ﬂed to Minsk, blaming each other for the fall of the “LitBel” SSR. Before

the attack, Pilsudski had sent fellow Polish Lithuanian Michal Römer to Kau-

nas to try to form a Polish-Lithuanian government, but no Lithuanian minister

had been interested. On  April, Wilno heard Pilsudski promise, in his “Proc-

lamation to the Inhabitants of the Former Grand Duchy of Lithuania,” that the

local population would be allowed to choose its own government. Polish and

Lithuanian nationalists both condemned the oration. In Warsaw, Polish Na-

tional Democrats thought it absurd to treat Wilno as anything but a Polish city;

The Contested Lithuanian-Belarusian Fatherland

in Kaunas, the Lithuanian government treated Pilsudski’s appeal to the Grand

Duchy as a facade for Polish imperialism.

During summer , as the Entente powers tried to decide on a ﬁnal terri-

torial dispensation in Paris, Polish and Lithuanian troops fought a series of in-

conclusive skirmishes. In August  Pilsudski proposed two plebiscites, one

in the lands occupied by Polish troops, and another in the rest of Lithuania.

Lithuanian leaders rejected this proposal on the grounds that Vilnius was

Lithuanian ethnic territory regardless of the expressed opinions of its inhabi-

tants. Foreign Minister Augustinas Voldemaras believed that “a nation is com-

posed more of the dead than the living,” which presumably raised practical

problems in terms of counting votes.

Pilsudski then tried in August  to

overthrow the Lithuanian government in Kaunas, but his plotters found no

Lithuanian collaborators and soon found themselves under arrest. If there had

been any supporters of alliance with Poland among leading Lithuanians, this ﬁ-

asco would have silenced them.

In winter –, Pilsudski believed that Russia could be defeated on the

battleﬁeld, and that the Wilno question would then answer itself. In April ,

Pilsudski’s Poland in alliance with Symon Petliura’s Ukraine mounted an offen-

sive against Bolshevik Russia; Bolshevik-Lithuanian treaty negotiations opened

at about the same time. By the time Lithuania and Bolshevik Russia were ready

to sign their bilateral treaty, in July , the tide of battle had turned against

Poland. Anticipating the coup de grâce, Bolshevik Russia offered Vilnius to

Lithuania, in return for free passage of the Red Army through Lithuania into

Poland. Lithuania agreed to attach a secret protocol to this effect to the Treaty

of Moscow of  July ; and the Red Army quickly occupied Vilnius, later

turning it over to Lithuania. Then, in August , the Polish Army reversed

the Red Army’s advance at the edge of Warsaw, and drove the Red Army from

Poland.

Had the Poles been defeated in summer , Bolshevik Russia

would have certainly absorbed the tiny Lithuanian state. The Lithuanian gov-

ernment, preoccupied with Poland, believed that a Bolshevik victory would

both preserve Lithuanian independence and grant Vilnius to Lithuania. This

was surely mistaken.

As Polish and Bolshevik delegations began to talk peace at Riga in Septem-

ber , the Entente powers pressed Poland and Lithuania to resolve their dif-

ferences. The two sides reached a political agreement on  October , pro-

viding for an armistice line that left Vilnius on the Lithuanian side. In secret,

Pilsudski had already planned the military operation which would return

First World War and Wilno Question